I was recently watching a rather odd horror called Smiley. It was a low budget cheese fest. However, it had a professor who had some interesting scientific theories that were of a quality far above the rest of the script and one in particular struck my imagination.

I'm currently writing a spin off animated trek series that is going to take place mostly in another galaxy. And I wanted to have a side effect of the galaxy is an unknown force that stops the replicators working.

One of the things the professor in SMiley said was what if Hydrogen wasn't the atomically lightest element. it would throw the universe to chaos.

What would happen if starfleet discovered a galaxy where there were other elements before hydrogen in the periodic table. Could I use to this explain why replicators don't work? In this galaxy the elements atomic weights are all in different places on the periodic table- hence the replicators cannot reassemble matter.

Would this have more drastic side effects? Transporters? WOuld the crew and ship even stay together in its molecular bonds if the galaxy was so different?